_Culch._ (_alone_). PODBURY knows very little about women. If HYP--Miss PRENDERGAST--once found out _why_ I renounced my suitorship, I should have very little peace, I know that--I've taken particular care not to betray my attachment to MAUD. I'm afraid she's beginning to notice it, but I must be careful. I don't like this sudden intimacy between them--it makes things so very awkward. They've been sitting under that tree over there for the last half-hour, and goodness only knows what confidences they may have exchanged! I really must go up and put a stop to it, presently. _UNDER THE TREE._ _Hypatia._ I only tell you all this, sweetest one, because I _do_ think you have rather too low an opinion of men as a class, and I wanted to show you that I have met at least _one_ man who was capable of a real and disinterested devotion. _Maud._ Well, I allowed that was about your idea. _Hyp._ And don't you recognise that it was very fine of him to give up everything for his friend's sake? _Maud_. I guess it depends how much "everything" amounted to. _Hyp._ (_annoyed_). I thought, darling, I had made it perfectly plain what a sacrifice it meant to him. _I_ know how much he--I needn't tell you there are certain symptoms one can_not_ be deceived in. _Maud._ No, I guess you needn't tell me _that_, love. And it was perfectly lovely of him to give you up, when he was under vow for you and all, sooner than stand in his friend's light--only I don't just see how that was going to help his friend any. _Hyp._ Don't you, dearest? Not when the friend was under vow for me, too? _Maud._ Well, HYPATIA PRENDERGAST! And how many admirers do you have around under vow, as a regular thing? _Hyp._ There were only those two. RUSKIN permits as many as seven at one time. _Maud._ That's a vurry liberal allowance, too. I don't see how there'd be sufficient suitors to go round. But maybe each gentleman can be under vow for seven distinct girls, to make things sort of square now? _Hyp._ Certainly not. The whole beauty of the idea lies in the unselfish and exclusive devotion of every knight to the same sovereign lady. In this case I happen to know that the--a--individual had never met his ideal until-- _Maud._ Until he met you? At Nuremberg, wasn't it? My! And what was his name? Do tell! _Hyp._ You must not press me, sweetest, for I cannot tell that--even to you. _Maud._ I don't believe but what I could guess. But say, you didn't care any for _him_, or you'd never have let him go like that? _I_ wouldn't. I should have suspected there was something behind! _Hyp._ My feelings towards him were purely potential. I did him the simple justice to believe that his self-abnegation was sincere. But, with your practical, cynical little mind, darling, you are hardly capable of--excuse me for saying so--of appreciating the real value and meaning of such magnanimity! _Maud._ Oh, I guess I _am_, though. Why, here's Mr. CULCHARD coming along. Well, Mr. CULCHARD?